Geoid

Geoid, model of the figure of Earth—i.e., of the planet’s size and shape—that coincides with mean sea level over the oceans and continues in continental areas as an imaginary sea-level surface defined by spirit level. It serves as a reference surface from which topographic heights and ocean depths are measured. The scientific discipline concerned with the precise figure of Earth and its determination and significance is known as geodesy.

Deflection of the vertical from the geoid to the spheroid.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The geoid is everywhere perpendicular to the pull of gravity and approximates the shape of a regular oblate spheroid (i.e., a flattened sphere). It is irregular, however, because of local buried-mass concentrations (departures from lateral homogeneity at depth) and because of differences in elevation between continents and seafloors. Mathematically speaking, the geoid is an equipotential surface; that is, it is characterized by the fact that over its entire extent the potential function is constant. This potential function describes the combined effects of the gravitational attraction of Earth’s mass and the centrifugal repulsion caused by the rotation of Earth about its axis.

Because of the irregular mass distributions in Earth and the resultant gravity anomalies, the geoid is not a simple mathematical surface. It consequently is not a suitable reference surface for a geometric figure of Earth. As reference figures of Earth, but not for its topography, simple geometric forms are used that approximate the geoid. For many purposes an adequate geometric representation of Earth is a sphere, for which only the radius of the sphere must be stated. When a more accurate reference figure is required, an ellipsoid of revolution is used as a representation of Earth’s shape and size. It is a surface generated by rotating an ellipse 360° about its minor axis. An ellipsoid that is used in geodetic calculations to represent Earth is called a reference ellipsoid. This ellipsoid of revolution is the shape most often used to represent a simple geometric reference surface.

An ellipsoid of revolution is specified by two parameters: a semimajor axis (equatorial radius for Earth) and a semiminor axis (polar radius), or the flattening. Flattening (f) is defined as the difference in magnitude between the semimajor axis (a) and the semiminor axis (b) divided by the semimajor axis, or f = (a − b)/a. For Earth the semimajor axis and semiminor axis differ by about 21 kilometres (13 miles), and the flattening is about one part in 300. The departures of the geoid from the best fitting ellipsoid of revolution are about ±100 metres (330 feet); the difference between the two semiaxes of the equatorial ellipse in the case of a triaxial ellipsoid fitting Earth is only about 80 metres.

This article reviews the development of simple geometric representations of Earth, beginning with the ancient Greeks. It then discusses the concept of the geoid and the ways in which tracking of artificial satellites and satellite mapping of the ocean surface have aided in the geodetic assessment of Earth’s shape and gravity field. It concludes by showing how this work has resulted in more refined values for Earth’s radius, mass, and density.

A historical review

Spherical era

The ancients

Credit for the idea that Earth is spherical is usually given to Pythagoras (flourished 6th century bce) and his school, who reasoned that, because the Moon and the Sun are spherical, Earth is too. Notable among other Greek philosophers, Hipparchus (2nd century bce) and Aristotle (4th century bce) came to the same conclusion. Aristotle devoted a part of his book De caelo (On the Heavens) to the defense of the doctrine. He also estimated that the circumference of Earth is about 400,000 stadia (a Greek stadium varied in length locally from 154 to 215 metres). Since the length of his stadium is not known with certainty, the accuracy of his estimate cannot be established. This seems to be the first scientific attempt to estimate the size of Earth. Eratosthenes (3rd century bce), however, is considered to be one of the founders of geodesy because he was the first to describe and apply a scientific measuring technique for determining the size of Earth (see the figure). He used a simple principle of estimating the size of a great circle passing through the North and South poles. Knowing the length of an arc (l) and the size of the corresponding central angle (a) that it subtends, one can obtain the radius of the sphere from the simple proportion that length of arc to size of the great circle (or circumference, 2πR, in which R is Earth’s radius) equals central angle to the angle subtended by the whole circumference (360°):

In order to determine the central angle a, Eratosthenes selected the city of Syene (modern Aswān on the Nile) because there the Sun in midsummer shone at noon vertically into a well. He assumed that all sunrays reaching Earth were parallel to one another, and he observed that the sunrays at Alexandria at the same time (midsummer at noontime) were not vertical but lay at an angle 1/50 of a complete revolution of Earth away from the zenith. Probably using data obtained by surveyors (official pacers), he estimated the distance (l) between Alexandria and Syene to be 5,000 stadia. From the above equation Eratosthenes obtained, for the length of a great circle, 50 × 5,000 = 250,000 stadia, which, using a plausible contemporary value for the stadium (185 metres), is 46,250,000 metres. The result is about 15 percent too large in comparison with modern measurements, but his result was extremely good considering the assumptions and the equipment with which the observations were made.

A new era in determining the size of Earth began through the introduction of triangulation. The idea of triangulation was apparently conceived by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe before the end of the 16th century, but it was developed as a science by a contemporary Dutch mathematician, Willebrord van Roijen Snell. Snell used a chain of 33 triangles to determine the length of an arc essentially in the way customarily done today. The resulting size of Earth, however, was 3.4 percent too small. The idea of triangulation is to establish a network of stations that form connecting triangles. One side of the first triangle in the chain, called the baseline, and all angles of the triangles are accurately measured. Using the law of sines from spherical trigonometry, the lengths of all sides thus can be computed starting from a known baseline. When the lengths and angles are known, coordinates can be computed for each point, provided the coordinates of one point and one azimuth are known. Triangulation points are usually placed on the tops of hills because the neighbouring points must be clearly visible. Commonly, more complicated figures such as quadrilaterals with diagonals are used in triangulation.

In 1669 Jean Picard, a French astronomer, first used a telescope in determining latitude and in measuring angles in triangulation that consisted of 13 triangles and extended from Paris 1.2° northward. His observations and results were extremely important because his length of arc on a great circle corresponding to 1° was used by the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton in his theoretical calculations to prove that the attraction of Earth is the principal force governing the motion of the Moon in its orbit.

Ellipsoidal era

The period from Eratosthenes to Picard can be called the spherical era of geodesy. A new ellipsoidal era was begun by Newton and the Dutch mathematician and scientist Christiaan Huygens. In Ptolemaic astronomy it had seemed natural to assume that Earth was an exact sphere with a centre that, in turn, all too easily became regarded as the centre of the entire universe. However, with growing conviction that the Copernican system is true—Earth moves around the Sun and rotates about its own axis—and with the advance in mechanical knowledge due chiefly to Newton and Huygens, it seemed natural to conceive of Earth as an oblate spheroid. In one of the many brilliant analyses in his Principia, published in 1687, Newton deduced Earth’s shape theoretically and found that the equatorial semiaxis would be 1/230 longer than the polar semiaxis (true value about 1/300).

Experimental evidence supporting this idea emerged in 1672 as the result of a French expedition to Guiana. The members of the expedition found that a pendulum clock that kept accurate time in Paris lost 21/2 minutes a day at Cayenne near the Equator. At that time no one knew how to interpret the observation, but Newton’s theory that gravity must be stronger at the poles (because of closer proximity to Earth’s centre) than at the Equator was a logical explanation.

It is possible to determine whether or not Earth is an oblate spheroid by measuring the length of an arc corresponding to a geodetic latitude difference at two places along the meridian (the ellipse passing through the poles) at different latitudes, which means at different distances from the Equator. This can be seen from the figure, in which the geodetic latitude at any point (P) is represented by the angle made between a line perpendicular to the ellipsoidal surface at the point P and the equatorial plane. This angle differs from the geocentric latitude that is determined by a line directed from the point P toward Earth’s centre. Such measurements of arc were made by the astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini and his son Jacques Cassini in France by continuing the arc of Picard north to Dunkirk and south to the boundary of Spain. Surprisingly, the result of that experiment (published in 1720) showed the length of a meridian degree north of Paris to be 111,017 metres, or 265 metres shorter than one south of Paris (111,282 metres). This suggested that Earth is a prolate spheroid, not flattened at the poles but elongated, with the equatorial axis shorter than the polar axis. This was completely at odds with Newton’s conclusions.

Elements of a reference ellipsoid.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

In order to settle the controversy caused by Newton’s theoretical derivations and the measurements of Cassini, the French Academy of Sciences sent two expeditions, one to Peru led by Pierre Bouguer and Charles-Marie de La Condamine to measure the length of a meridian degree in 1735 and another to Lapland in 1736 under Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis to make similar measurements. Both parties determined the length of the arcs by using the method of triangulation. Only one baseline, 14.3 kilometres long, was measured in Lapland, and two baselines, 12.2 and 10.3 kilometres long, were used in Peru. Astronomical observations for latitude determinations from which the size of the angles was computed were made by using the zenith sectors having radii up to four metres. The expedition to Lapland returned in 1737, and Maupertuis reported that the length of one degree of the meridian in Lapland was 57,437.9 toises. (The toise was an old unit of length equal to 1.949 metres.) This result, when compared with the corresponding value of 57,060 toises near Paris, proved that Earth was flattened at the poles. Later, large errors were found in the measurements, but they were in the “right direction.”

After the expedition returned from Peru in 1743, Bouguer and La Condamine could not agree on one common interpretation of the observations, mainly because of the use of two baselines and the lack of suitable computing techniques. The mean values of the two lengths calculated by them gave the length of the degree as 56,753 toises, which confirmed the earlier finding of the flattening of Earth. As a combined result of both expeditions, these values have been reported in the literature: semimajor axis, a = 6,397,300 metres; flattening, f = 1/216.8.

Almost simultaneously with the observations in South America, the French mathematical physicist Alexis-Claude Clairaut deduced the relationship between the variation in gravity between the Equator and the poles and the flattening. Clairaut’s ideal Earth contained no lateral variations in density and was covered by an ocean, so that the external shape was an equipotential of its own attraction and rotational acceleration. Under these assumptions, gravity at sea level can be written as a function of latitude ϕ in the form

The quantity m is on the same order of magnitude as f; it can be obtained more precisely by calculation than by measurement. Clairaut’s result is accurate only to the first order in f, but it shows clearly the relationship between the variation of gravity at sea level and the flattening. Later workers, particularly Friedrich R. Helmert of Germany, extended the expression to include higher-order terms, and gravimetric methods of determining f continued to be used, along with arc methods, up to the time when Earth-orbiting satellites were employed to make precise measurements (see the table).

Historical determinations of the Earth's radius and flattening

*Flattening denoted by f.

author

year

method

equatorial radius (in metres)

l/f*

P. Bouguer and P.-L. M. de Maupertuis

1735–43

arc

6,397,300

216.80

G.B. Airy

1830

arc

6,376,542

299.30

A.R. Clarke

1866

arc

6,378,206

295.00

F.R. Helmert

1884

gravimetric

299.25

J.F. Hayford

1906

arc

6,378,283

297.80

W.A. Heiskanen

1928

gravimetric

297.00

H. Jeffreys

1948

arc

6,378,099

297.10

Numerous arc measurements were subsequently made, one of which was the historic French measurement used for definition of a unit of length. In 1791 the French National Assembly adopted the new length unit, called the metre and defined as 1:10,000,000 part of the meridian quadrant from the Equator to the pole along the meridian that runs through Paris. For this purpose a new and more accurate arc measurement was carried out between Dunkirk and Barcelona in 1792–98. These measurements combined with those from the Peruvian expedition yielded a value of 6,376,428 metres for the semimajor axis and 1/311.5 for the flattening, which made the metre 0.02 percent “too short” from the intended definition.

The length of the semimajor axis, a, and flattening, f, continued to be determined by the arc method but with modification for the next 200 years. Gradually instruments and methods improved, and the results became more accurate. Interpretation was made easier through introduction of the statistical method of least squares.

The concept of the geoid

As noted above, the actual sea-level surface of Earth, even in the absence of the effects of waves, winds, currents, and tides, is not a simple mathematical form. The unperturbed ocean surface must be an equipotential surface of the gravitational field, and because the latter reflects variations due to heterogeneities of density within Earth, so also do the equipotentials. The particular equipotential surface that coincides over the oceans with unperturbed mean sea level constitutes the geoid. Under the continents the geoid is not directly accessible but is rather the surface to which water would rise if narrow canals were cut through the continents from ocean to ocean. The relationships between land and ocean surfaces, ellipsoid and geoid, are shown in the figure. The local direction of gravity is normal to the geoid, and the angle between this direction and the normal to the ellipsoid is known as the deflection of the vertical.

Before the methods of determining the geoid are discussed, it is useful to consider the significance of its undulations or departures from the ellipsoid. The geoid might appear to be a theoretical concept of little practical value, particularly in the case of points on the land surface of the continents, but such is not the case. The elevations of points on the land are determined by geodetic leveling, in which a spirit level is set “level,” or tangential to an equipotential surface, and sights are taken on calibrated rods. The differences in elevation determined are therefore with respect to the equipotential and so very nearly with respect to the geoid. The determination in three coordinates of a point on the continental surface by classical techniques thus required the knowledge of four quantities: latitude, longitude, elevation above the geoid, and undulation of the geoid from the ellipsoid at that location. Furthermore, the deflection of the vertical played a most important role, since its components in orthogonal directions contributed errors of the same amounts in astronomical determinations of latitude and longitude. While geodetic triangulation provided relative horizontal positions with high accuracy, the networks of triangulation in each nation or continent began from points whose astronomical positions were assumed. The only possibility of connecting these networks into a global system lay in the computation of the deflections (i.e., the slopes of the geoid) at all initial points. It is true that modern methods of geodetic positioning (discussed below) have altered this approach, but the geoid remains an important concept with definite practical utility.

Determining the form of the geoid with Stokes’s formula

The geoid is in essence an equipotential surface of the actual gravitational field. In the vicinity of a local mass excess that adds potential ΔU to the normal Earth’s potential at a point, the surface must warp outward in order to keep the total potential constant. The undulation N is given by

where g is the local value of the acceleration due to gravity. The effect of mass above the geoid complicates the simple picture; it can be allowed for in practice, but it is convenient to consider a point at sea level. The first problem is to determine N, not in terms of ΔU, which is not measured in terrestrial surveys, but rather in terms of departures of g from normal. The difference between the local measured value of gravity and the theoretical value at the same latitude on an ellipsoidal Earth free of lateral density variations is Δg. (The definition of Δg for points on the land surface above sea level is considered below.) The anomaly Δg arises from two causes. The first is the attraction of the mass excess, whose effect on gravity is given by the negative radial derivative of ΔU— i.e., −∂(ΔU)/∂r. The second is the effect of the height N, because gravity is measured on the geoid while the theoretical value refers to the ellipsoid. It is shown below that the vertical gradient of g at sea level is given by (−2g/a) where a is Earth’s radius, so that the height effect is given by

Combining both effects, therefore,

Formally, equation (6) establishes the relation between ΔU and the measurable value Δg, and if ΔU were determined, equation (4) would yield N. However, since both Δg and ΔU contain the effects of mass anomalies throughout an ill-defined region of Earth, not just beneath the station, equation (4) cannot be solved at a point on Earth without reference to others. The problem of relating N to Δg in a calculable manner was solved by the British physicist and mathematician Sir George Gabriel Stokes in 1849. Stokes obtained an integral equation for N, in which the integrand contains values of Δg, convolved with a function of their angular distance from the station, and the integral extends over the surface of Earth. Until the launching of satellites in 1957, Stokes’s formula constituted the principal method of determining the form of the geoid, but its application presented great difficulties. The function of angular distance contained in the integrand converges very slowly with that distance, and in the attempt to calculate N at any point—even in countries where g has been extensively measured—uncertainties enter from unsurveyed regions of Earth that may be at considerable distances from the station. Various methods of extrapolating the gravity anomalies into these regions on the assumption of isostatic equilibrium were attempted, but the modern approach, which is to combine data from satellites and from ground observers, makes use of the expansion of the potential in spherical harmonic rather than Stokes’s integral.

The development of artificial satellites whose orbits could be observed from Earth totally revolutionized man’s ability to define the shape of Earth and its gravity field. A value for the flattening of the ellipsoid that superseded all previous values was obtained within weeks after the launching of the Soviet Sputnik I in 1957. Since that time, scientists have repeatedly refined the geoid with observations from a succession of Earth-orbiting satellites.

As a satellite moves through Earth’s gravitational field, it experiences forces, in addition to the central attraction, because of irregularities in that field. These forces perturb the orbit of the satellite from the simple form given by Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

It is usual to start with an expression for the potential U of Earth’s gravitational field, in spherical coordinates (r,θ,λ), with origin at the mass centre of Earth. The gravitational potential U satisfies Laplace’s equation, a widely used second-order partial differential equation named after the 18th-century French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace. Accordingly, it can be expressed as a sum of spherical harmonics (a series of terms by which a variation of a quantity over the surface of a spherical or nearly spherical body such as Earth can be expressed mathematically to any desired degree of accuracy):

where M = the mass of Earth; G = the gravitational constant; a = the equatorial radius of Earth; θ = colatitude; and λ = longitude measured from an arbitrary meridian. The functions Pl (cos θ) and Plm (cos θ) are Legendre polynomials and Legendre associated polynomials (particular solutions of Laplace’s equation), respectively. The quantities Jl, o and Jl, m are dimensionless numbers whose magnitudes give the relative importance of the different spherical harmonic terms (or “wavelengths”) in the potential field. They were so designated in honour of Sir Harold Jeffreys, a pioneer in the analysis of the gravitational field in the presatellite era. Two features of equation (7) are important. First, if all of the J’s were zero, U would have spherical symmetry and a satellite would move in a constant elliptical orbit, as deduced by Kepler. Properties of this orbit would yield a value for the product MG, but not for M or G separately. Similarly, all observations on actual orbits give the product MG; the mass of Earth can be determined only when G is measured independently. Second, equation (7) contains no terms in l = 1; this is a consequence of the selection of the mass centre of Earth as origin, with all first moments of mass about that origin vanishing.

The most important term in the summations is that involving J2, o. Inserting the value of P2 (cos θ), the contribution to the potential is seen to be

The derivative of this expression with respect to θ is the force per unit mass acting on the satellite in the direction of increasing θ.

Physically, the term represents the effect on the potential of the ellipsoidal shape of Earth, and it is not surprising, therefore, that J2, o, known as the dynamical form factor, is closely related to the flattening f. In fact,

where m is the quantity introduced in equation (3).

As a satellite in an inclined orbit passes over the equatorial region of Earth, it experiences a force toward the Equator as a result of the mass in the equatorial bulge. This force represents a torque about the origin, and as in the case of the spinning top or gyroscope, the application of the torque causes the rotation axis of the satellite (normal to the plane of the orbit) to precess about Earth’s rotation axis. The plane of the orbit therefore precesses, resulting in changes in the satellite’s path that can be observed from Earth with a high degree of accuracy.

where gr is the value of g at satellite height and i is the inclination of the orbit. The numerical value of J2, o is approximately 0.001; for a satellite at the height of roughly 740 kilometres, with i = 20°, equation (9) gives ω as 6.5° per day. Since the precession persists over the life of the satellite, the rate can be observed with great accuracy.

The higher degree zonal spherical harmonics (the first summation) in equation (7) lead to perturbations of the orbit in the precessing orbital plane. To achieve high accuracy in satellite tracking, special satellites carrying reflectors have been employed in conjunction with ground stations equipped with lasers that may be beamed at such satellites. The time that it takes for a laser pulse to travel to a satellite and back gives its instantaneous distance from the station. This technique represents an advance over an earlier method of geometric satellite geodesy in which a satellite was photographed simultaneously from a number of stations on Earth against a background of stars. That method did not require a precise knowledge of a satellite’s orbit and permitted the location of an unknown station on Earth to be fixed relative to known stations. The simultaneous measurement of the distance from ground stations to satellites (i.e., satellite trilateration) allows points on Earth to be precisely located when the orbit is well determined, but the latter, as indicated above, depends on a knowledge of the gravitational field being sought in the experiment. The solution to this apparent paradox is for sufficient observations to be obtained to permit the optimum determination of both station coordinates in a global system and orbital parameter simultaneously.

A pioneer satellite designed for geodetic purposes was Lageos (Laser Geodynamic Satellite), launched by the United States on May 4, 1976, into a nearly circular orbit at a height of approximately 6,000 kilometres. It consisted of an aluminum sphere 60 centimetres (23.6 inches) in diameter that carried 426 reflectors suitable for reflecting laser beams back along their paths. The relatively high elevation was chosen to minimize both the effects of atmospheric drag and local gravity anomalies. Height, however, also attenuates the very effects that are sought, for, as equation (7) indicates, these decrease with increasing values of r. Satellites are therefore most effective at providing values of Jl, o to about l = 16 (a wavelength on the order of 2,500 kilometres). For larger values of l, measurements of gravity on Earth’s surface, reduced to mean values representative of 1° × 1° areas, must be used.

The tesseral harmonics in equation (7), those terms involving Jl, m, present an additional difficulty. Because the terms represent contributions to the potential having a longitude dependence, their effect in general is averaged out as Earth rotates under a satellite. The only exception is if the orbit and period of the satellite are such that the satellite tracks over points on Earth equally separated in longitude, repeating each track precisely after an integral number of cycles. Such a satellite is said to be resonant to a particular value of m. Values of m for which resonant satellites can be found are limited, lying between 9 and 15. For other tesseral harmonics, observations of surface gravity must again be used.

A great advantage of the spherical harmonic expansion is that there is a simple relationship between weighting functions in the geoid undulations, Nl,m; gravity anomalies, Δgl, m; and the Jl, m terms. It is

Equation (10) is an approximation to the extent that mean values of radius, a, and gravity, g, have been used. For the construction of maps of the geoid, however, it is usually sufficiently accurate, and it indicates clearly how the undulation coefficients Nl, m can be obtained either from the gravity anomalies Δg or from the terms Jl, m determined by satellites. The global map of the geoid is obtained by synthesizing the spherical harmonics, weighted by Nl, m, up to the maximum values of l and m available from the analysis of the observations.

Equation (10) is also useful for predicting the general nature of a map of the geoid, as contrasted to a map of gravity anomalies Δg. Each term in the expansion of N is reduced by the factor 1/(l − 1) in comparison with the corresponding term in Δg. As l increases, the reduction becomes more significant in that local effects do not appear on the geoidal map.

A geoid was determined from a combination of satellite observations, including Lageos, and surface measurements of gravity. The departures of the geoid from the ellipsoid ranged up to about 100 metres, the most pronounced inward warp lying just south of India. There was no obvious direct correlation between continents and oceans, but there were correlations with some of the major features of global tectonics.

Radar altimetry of the ocean surface

As noted above, the geoid over the oceans coincides with mean sea level, provided the dynamic effects of winds, tides, and currents are removed. The surface of the sea acts as a reflector for radar waves, and a satellite equipped with a radar altimeter can be used to sound from the satellite’s instantaneous position to the sea. The accuracy with which the sea surface can be reconstructed depends on how precisely the satellite orbit is known, and the reduction of the dynamic effects on the sea surface (waves and semidiurnal and diurnal tides) depends on averaging—over several days—of heights obtained from successive passes over identical points on Earth.

The first satellite dedicated to mapping the ocean surface was Seasat 1, launched by the United States on June 26, 1978. Seasat was operational until October 10, 1978, and reproduced its path over Earth every three days. It sampled elevation every three kilometres along the track and thereby provided average ocean heights for literally millions of points on the sea surface. The precision of a single determination of satellite height above the ocean surface was a few centimetres.

A global map was produced from 18-day averages of Seasat elevations. While it was not strictly the geoid, because long-term dynamic effects such as those of currents had not been averaged out, it was very close to it. Comparisons between the Seasat map and the geoids determined by the method described above showed agreement to about one metre, which was estimated to be the maximum dynamic effect on sea surface “topography.” The differences between true geoidal maps and maps of the sea surface are expected eventually to form a powerful tool for physical oceanography. Thus far, the main contribution of Seasat has been to provide a direct visual confirmation of the reality of the oceanic geoid and observations of higher resolution of some parts of the world ocean.